College buddies Jeremy Wang and Brett East team up
with Dr. Saffiyah Halcyone, Egyptian archaeologist, to search for the lost tomb
of the first emperor of China, Shi Huang Di.
Joined by the mysterious Jin, the threesome face the perils of rivers of
mercury, terracotta warriors, and a quicksilver dragon in order to stop the
emperor before he can rise again and continue his quest To Conquer Heaven.
I found this story nothing short of outstanding in
the way it weaves history, folklore, science, and magic into the plot. Desperate to conquer death, the first emperor
of China calls upon the Egyptians and their expertise on the afterlife. That, in turn, brings into play stories such
as the curse of the Pharaohs and historical characters such as Howard Carter
and Aleister Crowley. Coupled with the
mythical figure of the Monkey King in Chinese folklore and the tyrannical legacy
of Shi Huang Di, author Felix Long has a great deal of violence, magic, and
mystery with which to work. And he
weaves all these threads into a conclusion, a feat I was not certain was
possible mid-story.
Writings from the Tao Te Ching, the foundation
of Taoism, introduce each chapter. It’s basic form of declarations, followed by
contradictions to stimulate thought, seemed to be continued into the
novel. The chapters when our explorers
first enter the tomb are filled with contradictory situations, with Jeremy, a
doctoral student, and Saffiyah seeking science-based explanations for what
appears to be magic. In some cases,
science gets them out of a jam. But when
it doesn’t, magic is there as the backup.
It’s a fascinating interplay.
Character development in the story gave me some
pause. For an Egyptian archaeologist and
a doctoral student, there was not much planning and forethought for their
adventure. And giggling and ‘horseplay’
were more common than I would have expected.
Even the budding romance seemed to come out of nowhere. But overall, these were secondary issues.
More troubling for me was the writing style. Clearly, there are passages that are
beautifully worded and highly evocative.
Take for example: “The
sheer delight of survival was trickling away behind her, like a melting candy
coating revealing a seed of cold panic in her breast.” Very expressive, but any technique can be
over-worked. And analogies are. Then, there are phrases that seem complex for
no apparent reason, e.g., ““There was a subliminal susurration on the edge of
the audible spectrum.” As far as I can
tell, that just means there was a soft rustling. It’s clearly a matter of taste, but for mine,
the prose was unnecessarily dense, requiring some persistence to complete an
otherwise outstanding tale.
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